Shy Girl
by Caribous
Summary: Painfully shy Lilian student Ikegami Yumiko connects with beautiful ojou-sama Sayako. Even the fearful Yumi-chan can't see the storm clouds heading for them. Meanwhile, school paper editor Kasuga Seiko scandalizes Lilian with a reckless, deadly love affair with pious student Uemura Kaori. Events & characters referred to in Forest of Thorns, Blue Umbrella and Holding a Parasol.
1. Introduction

This story clears up all the old-time mysteries of Lilian Girls' Academy, and Yumi's mysteries in particular. How did the seur system come about, and how did it work. What really happened between future "Forest of Briars" novelist Suga Sei and the Lilian headmistress? Why did Sachiko's grandmother and her dearest friend Ikegami Yumiko, Katou Kei's emibttered landlady, and Yumi;s elderly friend, stop speaking to each other for five decades? What is the origin of Satou Sei's European looks, and what is her connection to Yumiko? How did the Rose Mansion and the biscuit door come to be? All that and more are inside.


	2. Prologue

"Gokigenyou," said three Saint Lillian's seniors in a group, to the girl approaching the statue of the Virgin Mary.

"Go-Gokigenyou," said the shy girl, not really looking up at them before waiting to pray.

Because it had just rained, the fall morning sky was particularly serene and alive behind Maria-sama.

It was year 23 of the Showa era at St. Lillian's Private School for Girls

Founded in Meiji 34, Shiritsu SanRirian Jogakuen was originally a one-room school for the children of Sanmauru Minashigoin. Sanmauru was an orphanage founded in Meiji year seven by Les Dames de Saint-Maur on 500 tsubo of land in the Tokyo foreign concession, in an area named Musashino after the war. At that time the orphanage fed, cared for and taught 70 orphan girls.

After nearly 30 years of dependence on contributions from benevolent sister organizations in France and Canada, The orphanage school became Saint-Lilian's Girls' Academy, and enrolled the young women of nobility, who studied beside the orphan girls, who of course, did not have to pay anything. It was partly surrounded by Musashi Field, an arboretum which was turned from flowers and ivies to vegetables during the war. The gardens and the orphanage greenhouse cultivate discipline in the girls, and a green thumb.

Regardless of their background, girls at St. Lillian's are held to the same strict standards. Inside, the whole school is as quiet as the library. Outside, shouting and horseplay are not allowed past the first couple of years of shougakkou. Girls are not to leave its care without becoming "nadeshiko, ojou, keiken*"

With the coming of the war, girls who were fatherless but whose family had some ability to pay something, and were of good character, have been allowed to enter St. Lillian's.

Ikegami Yumiko is one such girl.

* A 'Yamato nadeshiko' and an ojou-sama/lady, and devout.


	3. Count Your Blessings

For the millionth time, Yumiko thanked God for her dark eyes and straight, if too light, hair. Her mother had taught her to count her blessings on her rosary, and that was always a certain one. But it was probably good she did not have a second rosary for her gripes. Why had God made her, first of all, so shy? And given her such an unfortunate family circumstance? "God is mysterious, Maria-sama," she thought,

"Maria-sama, I don't want much," she whispered. With a lifetime of quietness behind it, it would never be heard by another living soul. "I just want to be a human being." Really, that was enough. It was time for her first lesson, her French class. Her first lesson ever at a school where she already knew she was doomed.

Every girl at Saint-Lillian's was very lucky to be there, of course. The orphans and the girls without fathers paying small fees that didn't cover their board, that went without saying. But even the ojou-samas were, after all, lucky generally, and that was what enabled them to be educated at Lillian's in the first place.

There was enough food, and not so much time was dedicated to work and Mass and so on that they couldn't study. Just as Yumiko had heard was the case in Russia, Japan was going to need more than wives to pull itself out of the chaos it was still in. Educated girls like Yumiko would be white-collar workers, even administrators and managers. Yumiko's mother would be proud of her, though as a Christian she would have been happy to have her daughter at Saint-Lillian's in any event.

The first day of school in the fall was a full day, and she'd risen early to make herself and her mother breakfast and wash up. Then she'd gone to Mass and hurried away, but had to stop to pray. Just greeting the older girls back distressed her so much she almost couldn't find her way to her classroom, but she scurried in like a mouse and was, luckily, the first student there. The teacher was seated at her desk and the lesson for the day was on the blackboard. Lillian's could not afford books, though their benefactors in Quebec and France did send them sundry donated books to practice reading in. Those books were passed from student to student for readings.

This first day, the students could seat themselves, and barring some good reason, could stay there for the term. Yumiko seated herself in the back near the window. Another blessing to count, and a real one.

There were two other girls in the class that were so quiet the teacher could not have heard them from her desk, so the teacher set an example of effort by following the French reading book back. It would have been too much to expect the first years to speak out loudly in French while reading - in the case of Yumiko, impossible. The book was a children's book and Yumiko had been drilled in elementary French by her mother so as to keep up with the orphans (and with some of the ojou-samas, the ones who could afford small group tutors). She was able to read without mistakes in her mouse's voice. She stuttered a great deal, but it was obvious that she was the same way in Japanese if one could get her to talk at all.

With some girls, their body language tells you that they prefer to remain silent all day. At a convent school, that was actually a bonus.

At lunch, everyone ate together, and one of the orphan girls waved at her and said "Hello." Yumiko looked away and turned red. At this point in her life, If more than one person talked to her, she always got so nervous she pulled her shoulders in to her body and looked sad. If people persisted in talking to her, she felt sick.


	4. The Social Whirl

Not to be outdone by the Catholics, Buddhist monks had converted the boys' orphanage school on nearby Hanadera into a boys' academy, called simply Hanadera Boys'Academy. Many of the ojou-samas had brothers there, and some were dating boys from there, although it was not officially allowed.

The most prominent family at the two schools was the Matsudairas. Businessman Matsudaira Tarou had married into minor nobility on the part of his wife Tetsuya in the Taisho era. Their children, Susumu and Chiyoko, went to Hanadera and Lilian, respectively. Miyoko Suzuki in Yumiko's year was dating Susumu, and Chiyoko was dating Ogasawara Masao in Susumu's year. The Ogasawaras were a fast-rising family, and there were advantages to both the Matsudairas and Ogasawaras if the two families were to merge. In post-war Japan, many of the social niceties like formal chaperones and courtship, and even the virginity of a bride, were quietly being ignored quite often. For obvious reasons, both the military and the nobility were in somewhat of a decline, while the business class was rising in prominence.

Although not nearly as rich as the Matsudairas or Ogasawaras, the most well-born family at the two schools was the Saikis. Saiki Ayako, universally called "Saiko," was being pursued by Kikuchi Hiroshi from Hanadera, but had been putting him off in such a polite way it was uncertain if he had understood that was what she was doing. Saiki Shigeru at Hanadera was a playboy, the opposite of his demure sister.

Yumiko had no place in this scheme of things. Frankly, she was not even legitimate.

Her father was an American student studying in Tokyo before the war. Her mother, Ikegami Shizuka, was sent to a co-ed college by her middle-class family to become a teacher, as she was too shy around men to consider being a bride, they thought. She surprised them all by having an affair with the handsome and studious Irish-American that was her study partner, exchanging Japanese lessons for English practice. However, after Yumiko was born, he went back to America. He occasionally sent money to Yumiko's mother, but eventually he married and started a family there, and stopped corresponding with his family in Japan.

Immediately after the war, he had returned to Japan as an officer, working as an interpreter and cultural liaison for the Occupation bureaucracy. Disregarding his family in America, he had immediately reunited with Shizuka, and she had moved herself and Yumiko in with him to the small house they still occupied. In order to help provide for them in now hunger-torn Japan, he bigamously married Shizuka in a Shinto ceremony, and was written into her family register, though Shizuka did not take his last name. She could now show a photo of the wedding, a photo of the family register, or a copy of her marriage license at the PX at the military base near where they lived and buy scarce goods at cost for her and her child. After his work for the Occupation finished, Yumiko's father left again and rejoined his family in America. Yumiko suspected she'd never see him again. At least, the belated marriage had given her something to say about her parentage that didn't outright proclaim her bastard child status.

Yumiko could have probably bought friends by leveraging her ability to buy things at the PX, but wouldn't have dreamed of doing so. Instead, she dutifully did her chores at home, kept entirely to herself all day at school, and helped out stocking at a small store after school to earn a little extra money for her family. On very rare occasions, when no one else was in the room, Yumiko and the other two mice would exchange a few words. Their feeling was that like creatures should flock together.


	5. Saiko

Saiko

Shy Girl C. 4

One of the things, of course, that Yumiko would talk about with Kazuko and Setsuko, the other two shy girls, was Saiki Ayako, almost literally the princess of the school. The second-year and her brother Shigeru were as aristocratic in behavior as their breeding would call for, though Saiko (as she was usually called) demonstrated a demure and modest version. Shigeru's was elegant but more decadent.

As life in general had become a bit more grim, they did what aristocrats often do - added some color and excitement to everyday life. Mainly by gossip.

Yumiko, unlike Setsuko and Kazuko, didn't proclaim herself a fan of Saiko, but inside, she knew she had a special feeling for the Lilian princess. Just this year, as Yumiko entered the final set of school terms as a first-year, the school had tried to build competence and independence into the girls by letting the older girls pick (or usually, be assigned) to a younger girl to teach them the rules, instead of the teachers and the nuns. Informally, they called the system " _ane/imouto_." To avoid confusion, some of the students called their mentor or trainee "sister" in English, but that conflicted with what they often called the actual nuns. Finally, the same French class that Yumiko was in declared that the terms "petite sœur" and "grande sœur" should be used, and it seemed to have stuck.

Yumiko was ashamed of the fact, but she often fantasized being the beautiful, elegant and unreachable Princess Saiko's petite sœur. "Yumi-chan," Saiko would say, "You've come along wonderfully." And then she would hug Yumiko to her chest and look at her proudly.

It was one of the visions that helped Yumiko make it through the day.


End file.
